246 TRAVELS IN THE CONFEDERATION 



from the great Canadian lakes as far as the western 

 regions of both the Carolinas, (the most of them bear- 

 ing ladings of 50 tons and more), almost without ex- 

 ception fall into the Ohio, and so facilitate communi- 

 cation between the remotest limits of that country. 

 This wealth of navigable waters inland will indeed 

 prevent Pittsburg from drawing to itself exclusively 

 the trade of the western country, as many are apt to 

 think, but it will always have the greater part of that 

 trade among other favorable conditions. In a country 

 of so many rivers no one place can expect to have the 

 exclusive trade, particularly if the people of these 

 frontier regions are themselves to become engaged in 

 trade, setting up their own little warehouses ; as is the 

 case in Virginia, which province has no especially 

 large commercial town for the reason that nearly all 

 the planters living as they do close by navigable streams 

 have built their own wharves and store-houses ; which 

 however is to be explained by other circumstances and 

 cannot be so generally imitated here. 



A part of the northern fur-trade cannot escape this 

 place, (if the friendship of the Indians can be as- 

 sured) although New York has greater hopes in that 

 regard, and may secure the heaviest part of the trade 

 through the most convenient channel of the rivers 

 Oneyda, Mohawk, and Hudson. From Pittsburg 

 down the Ohio and the Mississippi the way is long, 

 but the journey is often made in 14 days from here to 

 New Orleans at the mouth of the Mississippi. The 

 current of the Ohio is swift and supports great 

 burthens in the spring and in the fall. And this will 

 be the easiest, indeed the only road for the future ex- 

 port of the produce of these mountain parts. 



